Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A few weeks ago I had the wonderful opportunity to join with a number of men—and they were mainly men—in the Little Wars Convention that was held out at Lanyon in my electorate. The Little Wars Convention celebrates all things war gaming. It is one of those things where you get the invitation and you think, 'Gosh, how interesting will this be?' But when you go to the event, it is quite extraordinary the amount of effort and time and history that goes into setting up these war games and then actually playing them out. The war games that were featured this weekend were the Punic Wars right through to the Napoleonic Wars as well as World War I and World War II. They also had wars that were taking place in space as well as wars that were taking place in environments that are unknown, so it was a completely abstract concept.

The work that goes into their little figures and villages is just extraordinary. Hours and hours and hours of labour went into little elephants, into little palm trees, into little houses and villages. It is quite extraordinary. I want to congratulate and thank the organisers, particularly Leigh Crutchley and Ian Haidon for including me again this year. It was a great pleasure to see you all again. They went into great detail to explain to me what was actually happening. Thank you again for including me, and thank you again for donating all proceeds to Soldier On.